Sense of Style: Ampro Hair Gel rooted in Memphis

Ivory Latta, point guard for the WNBA's Tulsa Shock, gets her hair styled by Monica Carruthers, who is using Ampro products, during a recent photography session for their national ad campaign.

Grace Miguel, hairstylist for the R&B star Usher, was spotted at the Lansky 126 store at The Peabody in December when the singer performed in Memphis. Miguel was holding a jar of Ampro hair gel, which she said she used on Usher's hair. She was surprised to learn from Julie Lansky, who runs the store, that it is made in Memphis.

The incident, told by Cheri Rudner, chairman of Ampro Industries Inc. and daughter of Ampro founder Irvin Lansky, is a little too typical.

Ampro Pro Styl gel, popularly known as "the brown gel," has been the best-selling styling product in this country's multicultural hair care industry for decades. But relatively few people seem to know that the company's factory and headquarters are in Memphis.

"Everybody thinks it's made in their own city," said Camille Wright, a company spokeswoman.

The gel has the advantage of being both effective and cheap ($4.89 for 32 ounces at Walgreens). Users say it smooths hair, holds styles and makes hair shine.

In recent years, the company has pursued a higher profile. Last year, it began celebrity endorsements, enlisting Toya Wright, a BET reality TV star, in its national ads. Recently, Ivory Latta, a star point guard for the WNBA's Tulsa Shock team, took on that role.

Latta posed for several photos in a local shoot while a makeup artist styled her hair using the gel.

Ampro (short for American Products) was created in the 1940s by Irvin Lansky, brother of Bernard Lansky, the famous Beale Street clothier to Elvis Presley. Irvin Lansky opened a beauty supply wholesale business called Vogue Distributing Co. and later a retail store, Vogue Beauty and Barber Mart, a little way down from the Lansky clothing store on Beale at the site of what is now B.B. King's Blues Club, Rudner said.

Lansky talked to his customers and knew there was a need for a product that would help black women and men style their hair.

A chemist in Chicago helped him create the gel, and Irvin Lansky and his wife, Doris, made it in the basement, Rudner said. "There were no other hair gels (for African-Americans) on the market at that time, so once it hit, it was overwhelmingly accepted," she said.

Rudner said she worked the register on Saturdays when she was a child. Her mother told her that Elvis bought his black hair dye there. Later, the business would sell Presley a barber chair and a shampoo bowl so he could get his hair styled at home, she said.

The Lanskys eventually moved their production to another site Downtown. Rudner remembers seeing big cauldrons and people with paddles. "Someone would stir it around," she said.

Production is more sophisticated now. Ampro employs about 60 people and makes about 20 products, most of them ethnic styling products. Its factory is in Frayser, and corporate offices are at 6240 Poplar. Jack Sammons is president of the company.

Celebrity endorsements are not new for Ampro. Irvin Lansky, like his brother, Bernard, understood the value of that long ago.

Rudner has a poster from the 1980s of singer James Brown wearing a pageboy haircut under the words "Now you know ... it's Ampro."

"He and Daddy were close friends," said Rudner, but their endorsement contract lasted only a few years.

"There was a clause that said if Brown went to jail, it was null and void," she said. "And that's what happened."